A Child Raising a Child

Ebony Magazine

Michael must've licked his lips a thousand times sitting in the lobby of the small wedding hall they conveniently found in the yellow pages.

He was too scared to look Tayler's way. He was too nervous to stare at her dark brown eyes that held so much sadness and grief in them. He felt guilty for putting her in this situation, just the look in her eyes made him sick. He tried to avoid it at first.

But every now and then, he would look at her from the corner of his eyes and admire her features he had come accustom to. But one thing he wasn't used to was the look of worry and defeat that she held now.

It broke his heart to see her like that and it killed him to know, he was the reason.

He heard her retching after the wedding ceremony. His heart ached the more he listened. To think, the thought of her stomach being in knots at the thought of marrying him. The fact that her sweet mouth was filled with bile at the thought of loving him, broke him.

He surely thought she loved him, but as he listened intently to her sobs, he knew he was wrong.

Against his better judgement, he placed his hand on her bouncing knee as they sat waiting for the reporter to come and join them.

She gave him a slight smile at the gesture.

"Thanks" she was able to mutter.

"No problem" he started.

"We have to make it look real right?" he added.

He knew that line alone would hurt her but in that moment he wanted to hurt her like she hurt him.

Her mouth fell agape at the comment.

How could he say that? She thought.

This must not be real for him either.

Just when she was thinking of brushing his hand off, a voice rang out.

"Hello you two" the sweet voice called out.

They young couple looked up with smiles. They were ready to play their part.

"Hi"

"Hi, how are you?"

They both stood and gave the interviewer Roxana Johnson from Ebony magazine a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting"

"Oh it's fine, don't worry" Michael tried to smooth over.

The two knew Roxana was somewhere speaking to Joseph about exactly what boundary not to cross when it came to the questioning and what pictures to use and not to use. But he was sure she would try anyway.

Of course, he made sure the picture of the couple kissing would not make the cut as he felt it was too vulgar and sending the wrong message to young America.

"So if its ok with you two, I would like to start the interview first and then pictures of you two and baby Elijah afterwards" she gushed.

The two beamed with pride and nodded in agreement. Before this whole charade, they would never subject their infant son to this type of exposure but when their secret love child threaten to get out to the press, Joseph gave them no choice but to control the situation with a staged wedding and a few photo ops to extinguish the fire that was sure to engulf the Jackson family and threaten their clean cut legacy.

After having small talk about the direction of the interview and what she hoped to establish by this, it finally began.

"Well first, I would like to start off by saying congratulations to the two of you"